Farewell From the King of Spin?

By

Richard Lord

Jan. 22, 2013 3:34 p.m. ET

Without anyone realizing it completely, Perth's WACA ground might have played host to a momentous moment in cricketing history last week. It was there, on Jan. 16, that the Melbourne Stars lost the semifinal of this year's Big Bash League to the Perth Scorchers. But that wasn't the historical part. What mattered was that the Stars side was captained by Shane Warne. And it might just have been the Australian leg-spinning legend's last game in professional cricket.

ENLARGE

The Melbourne Stars' Shane Warne bowls against the Brisbane Heat in a Big Bash match in Brisbane on Jan. 3.
Getty Images

Warne retired from international cricket six years ago and quit first-class cricket more than four years ago. The 2011 season was then his last captaining and representing the Rajasthan Royals in the Indian Premier League. That left him to compete only in the Big Bash, and at 43 years old, he could well be finished with that as well.

If he is, then Warne's final foray into on-field action was in many ways a microcosm of his entire career. Not so much for his bowling performances—he managed just four wickets in seven Big Bash matches at an average of 39.75—so much as for his ability to steal the spotlight. Despite those mediocre numbers, he still managed to be center stage for most of the competition, spinning a web of headline-grabbing magic even if he could no longer quite do the same with the ball. He is the consummate entertainer and cricketing personality.

Some of that entertainment, of course, reflected rather dubiously on the entertainer. Despite the downbeat bowling contribution—he didn't even bowl in his last game—Warne still managed to be fined twice and suspended once during the tournament.

He also wasn't officially captain in the semifinal, as he had been for most of the tournament. That was because, in one of the earlier games, he'd been given a warning for the team bowling its overs too slowly. One more warning would have seen him suspended for the final. So to avoid the possibility, and with usual stand-in skipper Cameron White also one further infraction away from a suspension, the skipper's duties fell to 22-year-old all-rounder James Faulkner.

But Warne was still clearly in charge in the field, in contravention of a playing condition that was introduced before the tournament, because Sri Lanka's Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara did something similar in the recent World Twenty20. Warne said he wasn't aware of the change, which didn't stop him copping a $5,270 fine for the maneuver.

With over rates only a marginal issue in a Twenty20 game that only lasts three hours anyway, it was a fairly minor incident. More serious was his ugly altercation during the recent Melbourne derby with the Renegades and West Indies batsman Marlon Samuels.

During the Stars' innings, Warne felt that Samuels deliberately impeded David Hussey as he was going for a run. The authorities disagreed and didn't punish Samuels.

When Samuels came to the crease in the Renegades' innings, Warne repeatedly verbally abused him, and then when fielding threw the ball and hit Samuels, prompting Samuels to throw his bat in Warne's general direction. Samuels was warned for his "unbecoming behavior" under "extreme provocation." Warne was fined $4,750 and suspended for a game.

Making things more intense, Warne was miked up by the broadcasters during the incident. (A player on the fielding side often wears a microphone during T20 games so that he can talk to the commentators between balls.) And whenever Warne is in the team, broadcasters usually pick him. He is bound to say something interesting. (Last year, he even predicted how he would dismiss a Brisbane Heat batsman on air and promptly did it with the next ball.)

But then Warne has always been a master of using the media to his own ends. Before this year's Big Bash he even hinted that he might contemplate a return to Test cricket and then dismissed the idea once the headlines had been generated. He has also spent his entire career promising new mystery deliveries in news conferences and then carried on bowling the same as before.

He never needed those mystery deliveries anyway. Warne took 708 Test wickets at 25.41, single-handedly reviving the art of leg-spin bowling in the process. (Pakistan's Abdul Qadir aside, international bowlers had forgotten that art for a couple of decades.)

But the joy of Warne was that his mastery over batsmen was psychological as well as physical. He takes wickets as much through force of personality as his skill. His on-field banter at the expense of batsmen was sometimes discombobulating enough to border on the surrealistic. South Africa's otherwise excellent Daryl Cullinan (4,554 Test runs at 44.21), sought psychiatric help to overcome his struggles against Warne. Warne's response was to tell Cullinan during a subsequent game that he was going to send him back to the leather couch.

Conversely, part of Warne's appeal lies in his obvious vulnerability, the fact that someone so completely in command of his mind on the field has also been capable of so much recklessness. The Samuels incident was a case in point. He could also be reckless about what he consumed, receiving a one-year ban before the 2003 World Cup for taking a banned diuretic. (Warne said he hadn't know what was in the tablet when his mother gave it to him.) The complicated nature of his personal life assumed legendary proportions and helped to fuel his fame despite having nothing to do with cricket.

With Warne, the controversy is part of the package, part of the implicit understanding that he is there to entertain fans and will go to any length to do so. That he can't quite do it with the ball anymore doesn't matter. He still manages to have an impact one way or another.

His recent antics have prompted harrumphing from various people. But if this is the last we see of him on the field, he will remain not only one of cricket's greatest bowlers, but also its greatest and most entertaining controversy magnet.

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